1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc drive apparatus configured to record and reproduce a data signal with respect to an optical disc and, more specifically, to so called a slot-in type disc drive apparatus to which the optical disc is directly inserted into an apparatus body.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the related art, optical discs such as Compact Discs (CD), Digital Versatile discs (DVD), and Blue-ray Discs (BD), and optical magnetic discs such as Magneto optical (MO) or Mini Discs (MD) are widely known, and various types of disc drive apparatuses which accommodate these discs or disc cartridges are already in the market.
The disc drive apparatus includes a type configured to open a lid or a door provided on a housing and load a disc directly onto a turn table exposed therefrom, a type configured to place a disc on a disc tray coming out from and being retracted into the housing in the horizontal direction so that the disc is automatically loaded onto a turn table provided therein when the disc tray is retracted into the apparatus, and a type configured to load a disc directly onto a turn table provided on the disc tray. However, with any of these types, an operator performs operations such as opening or closing the lid or the door, causing the disc tray to come out or retract, or loading the disc onto the turn table.
In contrast, there is so-called a slot-in type disc drive apparatus configured to load the disc automatically onto the turn table only by inserting the disc from a disc slot provided on the front surface of the housing. In the field of mobile apparatuses on which the slot-in type disc drive apparatus is mounted such as a laptop personal computer, further reduction in size and thickness is demanded, and a demand of reduction in size and thickness of the disc drive apparatus is increasing corresponding thereto. In view of such background, as one of the slot-in type disc drive apparatuses, there is proposed a disc drive apparatus having a plurality of rotating arms having an abutment portion which comes into abutment with the outer periphery of a disc inserted from the disc slot on a front panel provided at a distal end portion thereof and rotatably supported at proximal end portions thereof, and is configured to perform a loading operation to retract the disc from the disc slot into the interior of the housing by rotating the rotating arms in a plane parallel to the disc and an ejecting operation to eject the disc from the disc slot out of the housing (see JP-A-2005-100595). Among the disc drive apparatuses which achieve the reduction in thickness, there are proposed ultra-thin disc drive apparatuses to be mounted to a laptop personal computer or the like such as those having a thickness of 12.7 mm, or those being reduced in thickness to 9.5 mm, which is as thin as a hard disk drive (HDD) unit.
The disc drive apparatus mounted in the related art is provided with a front panel on a drive body, and is configured to expose the front panel from an apparatus body of the laptop personal computer. However, the apparatus bodies of the laptop personal computers having the disc drive apparatus mounted therein have now various designs. Therefore, there is a demand not to provide the front panel on the disc drive apparatus, and make the apparatus body of the computer function as the front panel.
A disc drive apparatus which satisfies such demand is shown in FIG. 10. A disc drive apparatus 100 shown in FIG. 10 is so-called a slot-in type disc drive apparatus, and is mounted to an apparatus body 1001 of a laptop personal computer 1000. The disc drive apparatus 100 is fixed in the apparatus body 1001 so as to allow insertion and ejection of a disc via a disc slot 1003 formed on a side surface of the substantially rectangular apparatus body 1001. Specifically, in the laptop personal computer 1000, the disc drive apparatus 100 is fixed to a space right below a keyboard 1002 of the apparatus body 1001. The disc drive apparatus 100 is not provided directly with a front panel, and the apparatus body 1001 also functions as the front panel.
Assuming that an inclined portion 1004 is formed on the apparatus body 1001 for the purpose of improvement of its design, since the apparatus body 1001 by itself is also reduced in size and thickness, a mounting space for the disc drive apparatus 100 is limited, and hence it may be necessary to arrange the disc drive apparatus 100 at a position avoiding the inclined portion 1004. In this case, as shown in FIG. 10, the disc drive apparatus 100 is to be configured in such a manner that the disc slot 1003 of the apparatus body 1001 of the computer and the disc slot on the disc drive apparatus 100 are positioned apart. In the state of being apart from each other as described above, an event such that insertion of the disc into the disc drive apparatus 100 is not achieved depending on the direction of insertion of the disc from the disc slot 1003 may occur. Also, a space formed between these members being apart is a wasted space.
In addition, due to the space formed between the members being apart, the disc ejected from the disc drive apparatus 100 may not be exposed sufficiently out from the housing, so that an event such that a user has a difficulty to catch the ejected disc properly occurs.